Electrostatic motors have a long history. According to A History of Electricity, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1898, pp. 506 and 507 and The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Whittemore, Niles, and Hall, Boston, 1856, Vol. 5, p. 301, Andrew Gordon and Benjamin Franklin built electrostatic motors in the 1750's, 100 years before the advent of magnetic electric motors. The first capacitor electrostatic motor was developed by Karl Zipernowsky in 1889, "Zipernowsky Electrostatic Motor", Electrical World, Vol. 14, p. 260 (1889).
A review of early electrostatic motors is given by Oleg Jefimenko in "Electrostatic Motors", Electret Scientific Company, Star City, 1973. In this review, Jefimenko describes the history of electrostatic motors from Gordon's electric bells to modern motors which can be powered from atmospheric electricity.
J. H. Staudte describes a small electrostatic motor adapted for use in a wristwatch in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,629,624. This patent suggests the use of photolithographic techniques to fabricate a plurality of pole faces (lands) on a rotor and stator of an electrostatic motor.
Despite their distinguished history, electrostatic motors have found few practical applications because of the high voltages and mechanical accuracies required. These constraints have generally limited the use of such motors to large applications. Even so, electromagnetic motors usually are used in larger systems. Unfortunately, electromagnetic forces do not scale well into the miniature and micro domain. However, electrostatic forces do scale well, giving the potential for miniature and micro use of electrostatic motors, if the above-summarized problems can be overcome.